Tuesday, 1 April 2014

Cartegena – The escalator to nowhere, and the sound advice of Christobal Colon.

This port was such a
weird experience. At first, I thought it was going to be pretty
boring, although very beautiful from the mountains surrounding it,
flanked by huge industrial dock cranes. The further I got into the
city though, the more the oddities struck me.

Firstly, I found a
music shop and bought a new guitar tuner on impulse. I do really need
one for what I’m doing right now. Unfortunately, my time here was
limited to a couple of hours as the boat departed at three and
getting on the crew list had taken me ages.

I started plodding back
to the ship, which I saw a really slow moving escalator, seemingly
going just up into the sky. I decided to mount it. As I did, it sped
up alarmingly, elevating me quickly to the top of a hill. Expecting
some kind of shopping complex at the top I found – nothing.

Well, there was a bit
of ruined wall, and a view over the semi-demolished city, acres of
wasteland. I did find as I went around this wall, there was more
ruins on the other side, but I’ve never seen anything as bizzarre
as an escalator up a hill to a ruined building. It made me very
happy. From this elevated position I saw my next treat.

On the nearest standing
building of the next block, and more further up, spanning four
stories, was an astonishing mural. The sheer scale of this graffiti,
public art, whatever it was is indescribable. Either someone had a
crane or risked their life on some insane ladder assembly – or
worse, climbed it freestyle. I don't know, it just blew my mind.

Next treat was the
facade of a building, standing completely independantly in its own
scaffold, like a movie set. The crumbling building didn't look
particularly special, just old and dilapidated, along with it's
neighbours in this dusty, unkempt but startlingly beautiful part of
town.

By this time I was lost
an desperate to get back to the boat by curfew, so I decided not to
photograph the random plane on a pole, but I couldn't resist some
more brilliant street art.

When I finally found
the boat there was a stern looking statue of a man named 'Christobal
Colon' pointing towards it as if to say 'Get a jog on boy, the
Majesty awaits!'